Daily success and the importance of REM?

[Ellis91]

Greetings members of the Pulse  Not logged in for a while, very busy atm.

I've been OBEing consistently with the following method this week and have a quick question:

1. Used Audacity to create a 4 second alarm sound for my mobile. (does not require me to turn it off)
2. Wait for the alarm to wake me up in the early hours of the morning.
3. Remain still and calm immediately on waking.
4. Separate from body after 10+ seconds. 

Bearing in mind the above method, how important are sleep cycles?
The reason I ask is because sometimes the alarms wake me up and I get the desired results, sometimes I simply sleep through them.
My initial thoughts were that the alarms that go off when I'm in REM work perfectly and the NREM don't.

However, I don't particularly want to believe this, it seems limiting.
If some folks here at the pulse can close their eyes and project on a whim, shouldn't it be possible to wake up at any point in the night and project?

Any thoughts/input would be much appreciated.

[Lionheart]

If some folks here at the pulse can close their eyes and project on a whim, shouldn't it be possible to wake up at any point in the night and project?

Any thoughts/input would be much appreciated.

Yes, but this comes after a lot of patience, practice and perseverance with this practice in general.

You can do this anytime, anywhere day or night.

It's just much easier when it comes to you as a result of becoming consciously aware in a LD or from a groggy state where you can easily get back into the mind awake/body asleep mode.

[Ellis91]

Awesome, thanks for clearing things up

[Bedeekin]

"2. Wait for the alarm to wake me up in the early hours of the morning."

This is the key... not only in term of it waking you but the language you wrote it. Some could say... 'You waited for nothing.. you were asleep' not so... you ARE waiting for the alarm to wake you up. Think on that

I've been doing a lot of interesting stuff with my sleeping patterns. One reason was because my recent heavy workload was interfering with my practices and I needed to find a balance... the other was to test a long held hypothesis of OOBEs invariably occurring at the onset of natural REM cycling after the usual slow wave sleep.

[Lionheart]

I've been doing a lot of interesting stuff with my sleeping patterns. One reason was because my recent heavy workload was interfering with my practices and I needed to find a balance... the other was to test a long held hypothesis of OOBEs invariably occurring at the onset of natural REM cycling after the usual slow wave sleep.

Don't keep us in suspense Bedeekin! 

Pray tell, what are your conclusions?

[purpleTiger]

Yeah, I'm interested in hearing about balancing a lot of work and AP....i think due to a very busy lifestyle at the moment I'd struggle finding time to try anything.

[Bedeekin]

At the risk of someone saying 'Well whatever you find is all fine and well but it's YOUR way of doing it blah blah blah'....

I've been doing more morning ventures than night time ventures, which has been my main time of projecting since 'forever'. The quality and difference of the experiences are vastly different. The SP isn't as apparent and is almost nonexistent... the 'intruder' isn't apparent and the actual excursions are lighter (in mood) than night time ones but shorter and more dream-like. Maybe this is because of a feeling of the world waking up... or it may be a chemical thing... like Andosine (the wake up hormone) kicking in, as opposed to Melatonin at night.. which is a double edged sword; if you nap and get SP you will stay within the experience longer but if you don't nap the Melatonin just puts you under, like it's supposed to.

I started using an alarm to wake me up two hours earlier than usual and found that I had to shift it about to hit my sweet spot. The sweet spot being before REM kicks in (for SP) or early on in a dream (for LDing). The problem started when I was getting into an experience and my alarm went off' cutting it short. So I shifted it about... but I was constantly out thinking my alarm. I had about 5 false awakenings involving turning off my alarm and getting into the state then the alarm going off.